Manager or supervisor as coach

Jennifer Brown
Senior Consultant

"As a manager you have to lead; as a coach you have to encourage and empower. As a manager coach you have to put these two things together." Solution-Focused Coaching. J. Greene & A. Grant.

Many of us have participated in a learning process where someone else talks and we listen. The subject matter expert imparts knowledge or wisdom, which hopefully we are able to absorb, recall and use. This approach is not without its critics, from those who believe that the best and most meaningful learning occurs when individuals make their own discoveries or draw upon their inner knowledge. In essence, it is about enabling individuals to appreciate their own innate learning ability and solution generative or problem solving capability. Coaching is one such approach.

Ask don’t tell is the mantra of coaching and increasingly organisations are choosing to create a culture of coaching by training managers, supervisors and even peers to be coaches. The ultimate key to success is commitment at all levels of the organisation.

The rewards in training managers to be coaches are several. According to Zeus and Skiffington (The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work), the benefits range from improved communication and interpersonal skills, greater levels of self-direction and less dependency (on the manager), skill enhancement, increased learning and development, to business-focused outcomes.

Transitioning from a more traditional style of manager as “boss” to manager as coach does present its own special challenges, as described by the aforementioned coaching psychologist Anthony Grant and management and learning consultant, Jane Greene:

In one sense, a coaching style of management is a state of mind, an attitude, a shift in perspective. You have to move from the mindset of telling to the mindset of asking. You need to learn how to let go of telling people what to do and learn ways of asking the right kind of questions of yourself, of your team, of your department. You need to use solution-focused questions that will get the result you need.

Learning to coach provides a manager with his/her own personal growth and development opportunity. Not to be confused with mentoring – which is based more on the teacher-student principle – learning the art of coaching can open up a new way of working effectively with staff and free up the manager to get on with managing and growing the business.

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To find out more about supervisor as coach workshops training call Jennifer Brown on 03 9529 6600.

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